Midweek bliss

Image by Krista Keltanen

♥ Long drawn out morning coffee ♥ Jeans and t-shirts ♥ Ugg boots, not stilettos ♥ Dinner cooked at lunch time ♥ Daytime TV (I know, probably won’t happen, but it could) ♥ Writing all day ♥ Afternoon naps ♥ Midweek laughs with my bestie (I can’t wait to sit on her deck in the sunshine and whittle away the hours chatting) ♥ Breakfast sitting down, not eaten on the run ♥ Dog walks, shop runs ♥ Afternoon tea in the sun ♥ Phone chats ♥ I might even get through my email for once! ♥ Reading, oh I can’t wait to lay on the lounge with a good book, during the day, midweek (this is so novel I can’t even imagine what this will feel like) ♥ No rushing ♥ No peak hour traffic ♥ No watching the time every five minutes for the first two hours of my day ♥ Phone on silent. House silent. Head silent. ♥

Three weeks and counting. My life as I have known it for 23 years will change and my heart and soul cannot wait. I can't stop smiling, thinking of the freedom that will prevail. I have loved my career and feel incredibly blessed for the opportunities I have been presented with (truly blessed), but I am ready.

At one point, when I first started to realise I no longer loved working full time, I had planned to retire when I hit 50. FIFTY YEARS OLD! That is nine years away, how would I have lasted another nine years of full time, five days a week work? Impossible. I have been ready for this for a long time. I am so glad I listened to my authentic self.

Three weeks and counting.

Grab life by the lapels

Well here we are, in the second part of 2012. How fast do the days go by?! Only eight months ago I was planning to pursue my dream of working part time so I could focus on writing, and I now have merely 4-6 weeks of work left. I am so very excited. So excited.

I look back at the first half of 2012 with extreme pride, sadness, joy, relief and happiness, so much has happened that I am baffled at the velocity at which time flies by. I feel like I blinked and here we are. That inspires me, the fact that time eludes us and passes by so quickly. It inspires me to make the most of every day. It inspires me to grab life by the lapels and push fear aside to do what it is that brings most joy into my life. I have also undergone some serious life changes and although change is good it hasn’t always been easy. Taking each day as it presents itself with as much positivity as I can muster is how I get by, tomorrow is a new day and I don’t want to waste today worrying about that which I cannot change.

The day I decided to pursue my dream I wrote this post. “A year from now you will wish you had started today.” Even six months on from the start of the year I am seriously chuffed I acted when I did. I would be disappointed in myself if I reached December 2012 and I was still sitting in the same spot, thinking about my dream. Life is long, and I want to ensure mine is full of passion and dreams that come to fruition, I don’t want to wake up every day and plod through life feeling uninspired and find myself settling. I want excitement and fire in my belly, and the only one responsible for that is me. It all starts at me. 

Fittingly I started my first writing course this week. I am completing my first assessment today on the first day of the other half of this year, and the rest of my life.

If you are putting your dreams into action, what was it that inspired you to leap? 

Dreams of a wannabe work-at-home-mum

Image by Heidi Furre

I just realised the immensity of my very recent life changing decision. I’ve worked full time all my adult life so I don’t even know what it’s like to be at home midweek. Even on the odd occasion I have had the opportunity to traipse through the supermarket during the day midweek, I have smiled at how novel it all feels. The other day, after realising just how exciting this move from fulltime to very part-time is going to be, I started to comprehend the extent of my newfound freedom. 

No longer working full time means I will have no more stress about trying to find school holiday care. NO MORE PALMING MY CHILD OFF EVERY DAY ON SCHOOL HOLIDAYS. That means for 14 weeks per year I won’t have to arrange childcare. It amounts to approximately 70 days that I won’t have to wake my child up early to race him out the door, on his ‘holidays’, to go some place else. He can sleep in and spend days in his pjs. I just realised the immensity of the decision I have made.

My days won’t be ruled so much by ‘time’. Sure I will have to get my child to school on time but aside from that, I am going to start living by the seat of my pants, my pyjama pants. I dream of drinking my morning coffee for however the hell long I want. I intend on staying in my pjs until noon, although I won’t be looking at the clock so who really knows what time I’ll change out of them. I'll eat boiled eggs for breakfast. I’ll eat lunch when I am hungry, and not necessarily at ‘lunchtime’. I’ll simply set an alarm for school pick up time, everything in between will be done as and when I please. Less morning routine (thank you oh sweet Universe). School pick-ups. Catching up midweek with friends. More time to write. NANA NAPS! My dog might actually get walked. Dinner cooked before 6pm. Dinner cooked full stop. I can read books midweek (well I never!). Midweek tradesmen appointments. No Mondayitis (THIS, I will celebrate each and every Monday forevermore). Getting home before dark in winter. No more peak hour traffic. Trackies and ugg boots days. Makeup free days. Midweek housecleaning (I know I know, how exciting can cleaning be? – it won’t take up one of my two days off on weekends anymore is how).

I can’t explain just how excited I am. I have dreamt about being at home during the week for years. The last couple of years it has consumed my every day, I have been envious of SAHMs and have been consciously sending the universe a little message that I too, would love to spend more time at home. It just dawned on me the other day that I will soon be a WAHM. Not that I am a big fan of labels, but you know, WAHM is one I am happy to wear.

Now, where are my pjs.

In the land of my dreams

Image by Anna Inghardt

"Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there." ~Will Rogers

I am so inspired. That fire in the belly I wrote about here is roaring with gusto and life. The spark has been ignited like never before and is burning bright. I can see the path ahead of me, clear as day. I don’t know where it leads to but I do know it will be full of excitement and inspiration. I don’t know how I know, I just do.

No more than a week ago I got the great news that I could reduce my full time day job down to part time, very part time as in two days a week. The spare days I would usually be working will be spent pursuing my love of writing. I have to admit I am not rolling in money, nor am I probably even going to be able to cover my living expenses on time at the start, but somehow I am not afraid. I am nervous with excitement, but not afraid. I was more afraid of not taking the leap and slowly dying inside living as is expected rather than how I truly want to. A wise friend told me that when we follow our authentic self and do what our heart truly desires, the money will follow. I liked that statement, I trust it. Strangely I am not afraid.

In less than a week I have booked myself into a writing course that commences in less than two weeks. I sat staring at the screen about to register myself and for a split second my false self threw in the thought of “but, it’s so soon, will you have time?” I immediately clicked on the 'register' button. My false self has no place here in the land of my dreams. No place. I also have a photography course booked with a very dear friend of mine. We will spend the day out and about with photographers, learning and being inspired. I like where this is heading.

So if you wake up one day and your false self taunts you saying you cannot follow your dreams, tell it to rack off. Of course you can. I am. And I have no back up plan, no secret savings account to fall back on, no rich daddy to throw money my way when things get tight. But I do have the fire in my belly. And I can assure you, that fire makes me feel more alive than security ever did.

So I leapt

Image by Anna Inghardt

Today was monumental. 

I have been talking for a while about putting my dream into motion. I made the conscious decision to act on my dream 7 months ago, as I wrote here. I couldn’t share too much earlier on about how I would achieve my dream as the bulk of how it would eventuate was relying on my full time job. I don’t blog about my job, I keep my personal and work life very separate, and my blog is about me on a personal level. I rarely talk about my day once I leave the office let alone write about it. However to share my joyous news I am going to partially break my own no-talking-about-work pact.

To give you an insight, I co-own a small business. I also work there full time. I have worked full time since I left high school, some ten years ago. Ok, over two decades ago (I’m 41, yeah whatever). 23 years to be exact, 23 years of full time employment. I am exhausted. I’m done. I am sociable by nature so I love going in to spend the day with my colleagues and staff, but I have reached a point where I simply want to be home more. I want to not have to spend five mornings a week rushing around preparing for my day in the office. I don't want to ride that treadmill anymore, jumping on as the alarm goes off and jumping off at bedtime every weeknight. I didn’t take maternity leave or have a year at home after my son was born, I went back to work weeks after his birth. I have missed assemblies and school excursions. I haven’t had the opportunity to pick my child up from school every day. I haven’t had the opportunity to be able to cook dinner before 6pm on weekdays. I haven’t had the opportunity to come home after the school run and enjoy my morning coffee or make my bed at a leisurely pace rather than flinging the doona over as I am trying to find something to wear. I’ve missed all that. My choice, but it hasn’t been easy.

Enter my blog. I started my blog on a whim July last year and it has been the catalyst for me realising my love of writing. I came to the realisation last year that the one thing I want to do every day is write. I want to focus on myself, my home and my child. I want to focus on spending my day pleasing my soul. I am not a ‘carer’ by nature (you know, those kinds of people who just love to mother others and love to go out of their way to make sure others are happy?) and yet I have wound up in roles whereby the majority of my responsibility was caring for others and ensuring others' needs were met. Now it’s my turn.

Today I received the best news I could have imagined. My request to change my full time management role to a part-time business role, two days a week, was granted. I cannot tell you how happy my heart is. I can’t even start to imagine what this means for me and my dream. I will have three days (maybe two, I might give myself an extra day off) to concentrate on my writing. I can take photos and get stuck into my love of food photography. I might even do that graphic design course I have been dreaming of. And I can attend school assembly if I want and pick my child up from school. I can shower at noon if I like. I probably will.

I felt terribly scared of this move when I first started to think about it. What if I don’t get enough work, what if I can’t pay my mortgage? I will, somehow I will. All I know is that if I continued on doing what my heart was no longer passionate about I would slowly die inside. And my creative soul wasn’t letting me get away with that.

So I leapt.

Leap

Image by Silvia Sani

I am a dreamer, always have been. I used to whittle away hours daydreaming as a kid. Eden (my favourite blogger of all time y’all!) from over at Edenland recently wrote "I don't like the physical world .. I much prefer the world inside us." I love how her words make sense. I wouldn’t have been able to articulate that very feeling, but Eden did. Perfectly. I hibernate inside my own head a lot of the time, the real world is too negative a place for me at times. And too real.

Most recently I have put my dreaming to good use. I woke up one day about 7 months ago (16 November 2011 to be exact - I penned the date down) and realised the dreams I have need traction. The dreams I have will remain only as dreams unless I do something about it. The dreams I have are in fact attainable and the only thing stopping me, is me. So I grabbed a pen and paper, and simply wrote down my dreams. Just like that. I wrote them as they fell out of my head, in dot point form, without pause. No frills. No pretty doodling to make it look fancy, just blue ink on white paper.  My dreams in words. I wrote two things I want to do, a list of what I need to do to get there, and some driving words.

I looked back at my dreams scrawled on paper today and realised I have done exactly what I set out to do. Fast forward seven months and every choice I have made has been with my dreams in mind. I have made a seriously, SERIOUSLY scary career altering decision that will change everything that gives me financial security and financial freedom. It will change my life as I have known it for the past 23 years, the time that I have worked full time. It will freak the shit out of me the day I leap without wings, thinking about it makes the pit of my stomach bubble with excitement, nervous excitement. But they’re my dreams and I want them to materialise into reality. So as terrifying as the thought is, I need to leap.

I often talk of chasing dreams. It has been the essence of my thought process for years now, wanting to wake up in the morning and feel excitement at what my ‘working’ day has in store.  Real, gut churning excitement. Wanting to do what my heart truly desires – write.

And then I get an email advising a magazine article I submitted recently will be published next month. 

Suddenly leaping doesn’t seem so scary anymore.

Living the dream

Last weekend I sent off my second ever magazine article submission. It was scary, but good-scary. I didn’t exactly doubt myself but for a moment I did wonder if I was dreaming. Then I realised of course I am, but isn’t that what gives us butterflies in the pit of our stomach and keeps that burning flame going? If I submitted articles to magazines I didn’t admire, I wouldn’t exactly be going after my dream. Besides, I like to dream.

Two weeks ago I was very excited to receive an email advising my first ever magazine article submission will feature in the next edition (due out end of this month). I was ECSTATIC! I had been feeling unwell for about a week (I don’t do sniffly and unwell) and at a moment of feeling ‘ugh’ comes this email. I literally screamed out with joy and my son was staring at me clearly wondering ‘What on earth got into her?’ All feelings of unwell-ness dissipated for a few moments. The smile stayed for a week (it may still be lingering).

This was my first ever magazine article written and submitted. I seriously, hand on my heart, was not expecting it to be published. When I saw the email in my inbox I thought ‘Ok, here comes the thanks-but-no-thanks’, not because I doubted my article was readable and perhaps even likeable, but because I thought it'd be pretty tinny to get published at my first attempt. So aside from the fact I took the first step to putting my dreams into action without too high an expectation, I was very pleasantly surprised to discover I did it. I actually did it.

I love seeing people realise their dreams. And what I love most is seeing people wholeheartedly, with sheer determination chase those dreams. That so inspires me. People that chase their deepest dreams, despite the fear, self-doubt and boundaries. Just inspiring.

Admittedly I have nothing much to lose by submitting an article. I love to write, I enjoy the effort it takes, and I love to read and re-read something I have written, tweaking it and editing it, moving words around until I am completely happy with it. I sometimes edit blog posts 4, 5, 10 times. I love the entire process. So the preparation for writing an article is half the fun for me. If the biggest downside of submitting an article is being told ‘thanks, but no thanks’ then that’s okay by me. I don’t think I would even be too disappointed at this stage, I admit I am a newbie to the whole article submission thing. But I have been writing my entire life, so if my words don’t appeal to one person, they might the next. I don’t take offence to that.

So when you next think of something that burns your heart with sheer passion and fills your life with joy, and you can see yourself doing that very thing for the rest of your days, go for it. There are no real boundaries but you. Whether you can do it depends solely on YOU. Stop wondering and just go for it. I decided late last year I was going to write a magazine article a month, and now mid February I have written three articles (and have submitted two of them). If I had dreamt about doing it but never took those first steps I would have looked back come December to see nothing but a distant, relinquished dream wasted away over the year. But now having taken those first steps, even if not one article got submitted I would still at least look back and know I acted.

And that there is the start of one’s dreams. Action.

Starting today...

What is it about self-doubt? Why do we often find ourselves questioning our own ability and taking the easy path out of fear? I thought about this today. I wondered about my three year plan. Why did I make it three years? I’ll tell you why, to keep me and my dream safe. To ensure I have two and half years to procrastinate and slowly make my way towards my dream and hope that all falls into place organically, all the while maintaining my current level of security. I did the same with my kitchen when we first bought our house – three year kitchen reno plan. It has been three and a half years.

So why do we not just dive in and follow our dreams? I often see people with a passion, a goal, a dream to be or do something they love, yet not a lot of action. I understand we need to plan; flying by the seat of the pants is just not conducive with a grown-up lifestyle of mortgage, school fees (and the rest) and mouths to feed. But when are we ever truly safe to just ‘be’? When do we reach a point where we no longer require more money? Do we ever reach that point? We get a pay rise, we spend more. We get a better job, we crave a better one. Where is the point where we stop and say to ourselves “I don’t need more money. I don’t need a better job.”? Well I can tell you. Today was that day.

I was driving home from work this afternoon and I started thinking about my plan, my three year, very ‘safe’ plan. What is stopping me from making it a six month plan? Fear. Nothing else but fear. I don't need funds to get my plan happening. I don’t need an office or space or anything other than my sheer drive and determination, my laptop (or failing that pen and paper) and direction, all of which I already have.

So, today starts my plan. I’ve already formulated a draft. I’ve listed what needs to be done, what I need to do it, and steps. That there, along with my can-do attitude, is my safety.

                               

Six months.

{image source: Pinterest}